The attempted Clinton-CIA coup against Donald Trump

[David Guyatt]

On the matter of the US Intelligence Community report that Russia interfered in the US election, Masha Gessen in the NYR Daily, exhaustively and forensically examines the claims and finds everyone wanting - and most farcical. As indeed, would any journalist worth their salt.

Russia, Trump & Flawed Intelligence
Masha Gessen
US Defense Under Secretary for Intelligence Marcel Lettre, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers testifying before the Senate, Washington, D.C., January 5, 2017
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
US Defense Under Secretary for Intelligence Marcel Lettre, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers testifying before the Senate, Washington, D.C., January 5, 2017
After months of anticipation, speculation, and hand-wringing by politicians and journalists, American intelligence agencies have finally released a declassified version of a report on the part they believe Russia played in the US presidential election. On Friday, when the report appeared, the major newspapers came out with virtually identical headlines highlighting the agencies' finding that Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered an "influence campaign" to help Donald Trump win the presidencya finding the agencies say they hold "with high confidence."


A close reading of the report shows that it barely supports such a conclusion. Indeed, it barely supports any conclusion. There is not much to read: the declassified version is twenty-five pages, of which two are blank, four are decorative, one contains an explanation of terms, one a table of contents, and seven are a previously published unclassified report by the CIA's Open Source division. There is even less to process: the report adds hardly anything to what we already knew. The strongest allegationsincluding about the nature of the DNC hackinghad already been spelled out in much greater detail in earlier media reports.


But the real problems come with the findings themselves. The report leads with three "key judgments":


"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election";
"Moscow's influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operationssuch as cyber activitywith overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or trolls'";
"We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes."
It is the first of these judgments that made headlines, so let us look at the evidence the document provides for this assertion. This evidence takes up just over a page and contains nine points. The first four make the argument that Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to lose. I will paraphrase for the sake of brevity and clarity:


Putin and the Russian government aimed to help Trump by making public statements discrediting Hillary Clinton;
the Kremlin's goal is to undermine "the US-led liberal democratic order";
Putin claimed that the Panama Papers leak and the Olympic doping scandal were "US-directed efforts to defame Russia," and this suggests that he would use defamatory tactics against the United States;
Putin personally dislikes Hillary Clinton and blames her for inspiring popular unrest in Russia in 2011-2012.
None of this is new or particularly illuminatingat least for anyone who has been following Russian media in any language; some of it seems irrelevant. (Though the report notes that the NSA has only "moderate confidence" in point number one, unlike the CIA and FBI, which have "high confidence" in it.) The next set of points aim to buttress the assertion that Putin "developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump over Secretary Clinton." The following is an exact quote:


Beginning in June, Putin's public comments about the US presidential race avoided directly praising President-elect Trump, probably because Kremlin officials thought that any praise from Putin personally would backfire in the United States. Nonetheless, Putin publicly indicated a preference for President-elect Trump's stated policy to work with Russia, and pro-Kremlin figures spoke highly about what they saw as his Russia-friendly positions on Syria and Ukraine.


The wording makes it sound as though before June 2016 Putin had been constantly praising Trump in his public statements. In fact, though, Putin had spoken of Trump exactly oncewhen asked a question about him as he was leaving the hall following his annual press conference in December 2015. At that time, he said,


Well, he is a colorful person. Talented, without a doubt. But it's none of our business, it's up to the voters in the United States. But he is the absolute leader of the presidential race. He says he wants to shift to a different mode or relations, a deeper level of relations with Russia. How could we not welcome that? Of course we welcome it. As for the domestic politics of it, the turns of phrase he uses to increase his popularity, I'll repeat, it's not our business to evaluate his work.


Nothing in this statement is remarkable. At the time, Trump, who was polling well in the Republican primary race, was the only aspiring presidential candidate to have indicated a willingness to dial back US-Russian hostilities. The topic was clearly judged not important enough to be included in the main body of Putin's more-than-four-hour press conference but deserving of a boilerplate "we hear you" message sent as Putin literally headed out the door.


The Russian word for "colorful"yarkiycan be translated as "bright," as in a "bright color." That must be how Trump came to think that Putin had called him "brilliant," an assertion that the US media (and, it appears, US intelligence agencies) failed to fact-check. In June 2016, at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, American journalist Fareed Zakaria, moderating a panel, asked Putin, "The American Republican presumptive nominee, Donald Trumpyou called him brilliant,' outstanding,' talented.' These comments were reported around the world. I was wondering what in him led you to that judgment, and do you still hold that judgment?" Of the epithets listed by Zakaria, Putin had used only the word "talented," and he had not specified what sort of talent he had seen in Trump. Putin reprimanded Zakaria for exaggerating. "Look at what I said," he said. "I made an off-hand remark about Trump being a colorful person. Are you saying he is not colorful? He is colorful. I did not characterize him in any other way. But what I did note, and what I certainly welcome, and I see nothing wrong with thisMr. Trump has stated that he is ready for the renewal of a full-fledged relationship between Russia and the United States. What is wrong with that? We all welcome it. Don't you?" Zakaria looked mortified: he had been caught asking an ill-informed question. Putin, on the other hand, was telling the truth for once. As for the American intelligence agencies marshaling this exchange as evidence of a change of tone and moreevidence of Russian meddling in the electionthat is plainly misleading.


The next two points purporting to prove that Putin had a preference for Trump are, incredibly, even weaker arguments:


Putin thought that he and Trump would be able to create an international anti-ISIS coalition;
Putin likes to work with political leaders "whose business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder."
Number 6 is puzzling. Nominally, Russia and the United States have already been cooperating in the fight against ISIS. The reference is probably to Putin's offer, made in September 2015 in a speech to the UN General Assembly, to form an international anti-terrorist coalition that, Putin seemed to suggest, would stop the criticism and sanctions imposed in response to Russia's war against Ukraine. Obama snubbed the offer then. Then again, this is my conjecture: the report contains no elucidation of this ascertainment of Putin's motives. As for Number 7, not only is it conjecture on the part of the report's authors, it is also anachronistic: Schroeder was a career politician before becoming a businessman with interests in Russia, as his term in political office was drawing to a close.


The final two arguments in this section of the report focus on the fact that Russian officials and propagandists stopped criticizing the US election process after election day and Russian trolls dropped a planned #DemocracyRIP campaign, which they had planned in anticipation of Hillary Clinton's victory. (Notably, according to the intelligence agencies, whatever influence the Russians were trying to exert, they themselves seem to have assumed that Clinton would win regardlessand this is in fact supported by outside evidence.) The logic of these arguments is as sound as saying, "You were so happy to see it rain yesterday that you must have caused the rain yourself."


That is the entirety of the evidence the report offers to support its estimation of Putin's motives for allegedly working to elect Trump: conjecture based on other politicians in other periods, on other continentsand also on misreported or mistranslated public statements.


The next two and a half pages of the report deal with the mechanics of Russia's ostensible intervention in the election. It confirms, briefly, earlier reports that the intelligence agencies believe that the hacks of the Democratic National Committee were carried out by an individual connected to the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). It also notes, without elaboration, that "Russian intelligence accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards," though, according to the Department of Homeland Security, not the type of systems that are involved in vote tallying. And then the report goes from vague to strange: it lists the elements of Russia's "state-run propaganda machine" that ostensibly exemplify the Kremlin's campaign for Trump and denigration of Clinton. These include RT, the Russian English-language propaganda channel (as well as Sputnik, a state-funded online news site); a Russian television personality; and a fringe Russian politician named Vladimir Zhirinovsky. According to the report:


Pro-Kremlin proxy Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, proclaimed just before the election that if President-elect Trump won, Russia would "drink champagne" in anticipation of being able to advance its positions on Syria and Ukraine.


In the Russian political sphere, Zhirinovsky is far from the mainstream. A man who has advocated mobilizing the Russian military to shoot all migratory birds in order to prevent an epidemic of bird flu, he is a far-right comic sidekick to the Kremlin's straight man. Dictators like to keep his kind around as reminders of the chaos and extremism that could threaten the world in their absence. In Hungary, for example, the extremist Jobbik party allows Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to look moderate in comparison. The particular statement about drinking champagne was made during a televised talk show in which several Russian personalities get together to beat up rhetorically on a former insurance executive named Michael Bohm, who has fashioned a career of playing an American pundit on Russian TV. Here is the exchange that preceded Zhirinovsky's promise to drink champagne:


They threaten to cut Russia off from international financial systems. They can do that! But then we won't give America a single dollar back. That's hundreds of billions of dollars! Hundreds of billions! If they cut us off, they cut off the repayment of all our debts. Hundreds of billions! They are not dumb, so they'll never do it. Never. As for the arms race, sometimes we are ahead and sometimes they are. We've got parity. But there is another danger to America. They have a hundred nuclear power stations. And we can reach all of them. And the destruction of a single nuclear power station kills every living thing on a territory of five hundred thousand square kilometers. That's fifty million square kilometers. But all of America is just ten million square kilometers. So a single explosion will destroy America five times over. Same thing with us. But our stations are on the fringes. Theirs are in densely populated areas. So blowing up their nuclear reactors will kill more people in America. Plus, we have lots of empty space. So they have weighed it: Russia's survival rates will be higher than America's. More of them will die in case of nuclear war.


Host: Remember you also told us about magnetic weapons that will make us stick to our beds and incapable of getting up?


Zhirinovsky: Yes, there is that, too.


[A brief exchange about the arms race between two other participants]


Zhirinovsky: I hope that Aleppo is free of guerrilla fighters before November 8!


Sergei Stankevich [a largely forgotten Yeltsin-era politician]: But then we have to think about what happens November 9, if we've already liberated Aleppo.


Zhirinovsky: We are going to be drinking champagne to celebrate a Trump victory! [to Bohm] And to the defeat of your friend Hillary Clinton!


Remarkably, the report manages not only to offer a few words thrown out during this absurd exchange as evidence of a larger Russian strategy, but also to distort those words in the process: contrary to the report's assertion, Zhironovsky made no mention of being able to advance Russia's positions in Syria and Ukraine following a Trump victory. Of course, he could haveindeed, he could have said anything, given the tenor of the conversation. Whatever he said, it's difficult to imagine how it could be connected to Russia's ostensible influence on the American election.


Other evidence in this part of the report includes the statement, "Russian media hailed President-elect Trump's victory as a vindication of Putin's advocacy of global populist movementsthe theme of Putin's annual conference for Western academics in October 2016." This statement is false. The theme of Putin's annual conference, known as the Valdai Club, was "The Future Begins Today: Outlines of the World of Tomorrow." The program reads like the program of the annual World Affairs Council conference in San Franciscowhich last year, coincidentally, was called "Day One: The World That Awaits." This is not to say that Putin has not supported populist movements around the worldhe demonstrably has. But once again the particular evidence offered by the report on this point is both weak and false.


Finally, the bulk of the rest of the report is devoted to RT, the television network formerly known as Russia Today.


RT's coverage of Secretary Clinton throughout the US presidential campaign was consistently negative and focused on her leaked e-mails and accused her of corruption, poor physical and mental health, and ties to Islamic extremism. Some Russian officials echoed Russian lines for the influence campaign that Secretary Clinton's election could lead to a war between the United States and Russia.


In other words, RT acted much like homegrown American media outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart. A seven-page annex to the report details RT activities, including hosting third-party candidate debates, broadcasting a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement and "anti-fracking programming, highlighting environmental issues and the impacts on public health"perfectly appropriate journalistic activities, even if they do appear on what is certainly a propaganda outlet funded by an aggressive dictatorship. An entire page is devoted to RT's social media footprint: the network appears to score more YouTube views than CNN (though far fewer Facebook likes). Even this part of the report is slightly misleading: RT's tactics for inflating its viewership numbers in order to secure continued Kremlin funding has been the subject of some convincing scholarship. That is the entirety of the case the intelligence agencies have presented: Putin wanted Trump to win and used WikiLeaks and RT to ensure that outcome.


Despite its brevity, the report makes many repetitive statements remarkable for their misplaced modifiers, mangled assertions, and missing words. This is not just bad English: this is muddled thinking and vague or entirely absent argument. Take, for example, this phrase: "Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity." I think, though I cannot be sure, that the authors of the report are speculating that Moscow gave the products of its hacking operation to WikiLeaks because WikiLeaks is known as a reliable source. The next line, however, makes this speculation unnecessary: "Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries."


Or consider this: "Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him." Did Putin's desire to discredit Clinton stem from his own public statements, or are the intelligence agencies basing their appraisal of Putin's motives on his public statements? Logic suggests the latter, but grammar indicates the former. The fog is not coincidental: if the report's vague assertions were clarified and its circular logic straightened out, nothing would be left.


It is conceivable that the classified version of the report, which includes additional "supporting information" and sourcing, adds up to a stronger case. But considering the arc of the argument contained in the report, and the principal findings (which are apparently "identical" to those in the classified version), this would be a charitable reading. An appropriate headline for a news story on this report might be something like, "Intel Report on Russia Reveals Few New Facts," or, say, "Intelligence Agencies Claim Russian Propaganda TV Influenced Election." Instead, however, the major newspapers and commentators spoke in unison, broadcasting the report's assertion of Putin's intent without examining the arguments.


The New York Times called it "a strong statement from three intelligence agencies," and followed its uncritical coverage with a story mocking Trump supporters for asking, "What's the big deal?"


"How is it possible, if these intelligence reports are true, to count the 2016 Presidential election as unsullied?" asked New Yorker editor David Remnick in a piece published Friday. But since when has "unsullied" been a criterion on which a democratic process is judged? Standard measures include transparency, fairness, openness, accessibility to all voters and to different candidates. Anything that compromises these standards, whether because of domestic or external causes, may throw a result into doubt. But Remnick's rhetorical question seems to reach for an entirely different standard: that of a process that is demonstrably free of any outside influence. Last month Paul Krugman at The New York Times railed, similarly, that the election was "tainted." Democracy is messy, as autocrats the world over will never tire of pointing out. They are the ones who usually traffic in ideas of order and purityas well as in conspiracy theories based on sweeping arguments and scant, haphazard evidence.


The election of Donald Trump is anomalous, both because of the campaign he ran and the peculiar vote mathematics that brought him victory. His use of fake news, his serial lying, his conning his way into free air time, his instrumentalization of partisanship and naked aggression certainly violated the norms of American democracy. But the intelligence report does nothing to clarify the abnormalities of Trump's campaign and election. Instead, it risks perpetuating the fallacy that Trump is some sort of a foreign agent rather than a home-grown demagogue, while doing further damage to our faith in the electoral system. It also suggests that the US intelligence agencies' Russia expertise is weak and throws into question their ability to process and present informationall this, two weeks before a man with no government experience but with a short Twitter fuse takes the oath of office.


January 9, 2017, 10:17 pm

Source

[David Guyatt]

In the below article, award winning investigative reporter, Robert Parry, sets about the Intelligence Community's use of lurid and unsupported Russian sex stories. He reveals that during the recent meeting between the IC and Trump, they trotted out this specious document with a view to blackmailing Trump into compliance with their agenda. It seems likely they had a marginal success and that Trump temporarily backed their "the Russians did it" allegations about the DNC leak.

However, it looks as though he changed his mind which led the IC releasing Golden Shower dossier in an attempt to destroy him. That move clearly, was nothing less than the deep state publicly declaring open warfare against an elected president.

It also publicly reveals how fearful the deep state is about Trump and his plans to normalize relations with Russia - a nation the IC, the defence industry and others need to be the perpetual bogey-man so they can continue to bleed the US of tax-dollars and to keep their listing ship of state sailing in the direction they demand in support of the hegemonic New American Century ---- and, more than anything else, to prop up the incremental failure of a destructive and wicked world-wide neoliberal economic order.

Pulling a J. Edgar Hoover on Trump


January 12, 2017

Exclusive: President-elect Trump is fending off a U.S. intelligence leak of unproven allegations that he cavorted with Russian prostitutes, but the darker story might be the CIA's intervention in U.S. politics, reports Robert Parry.




By Robert Parry


The decision by the U.S. intelligence community to include in an official report some unverified and salacious accusations against President-elect Donald Trump resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press.




Legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover
In this case, as leaders of the U.S. intelligence community were pressing Trump to accept their assessment that the Russian government had tried to bolster Trump's campaign by stealing and leaking actual emails harmful to Hillary Clinton's campaign, Trump was confronted with this classified "appendix" describing claims about him cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.


Supposedly, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan included the unproven allegations in the report under the rationale that the Russian government might have videotaped Trump's misbehavior and thus could use it to blackmail him. But the U.S. intelligence community also had reasons to want to threaten Trump who has been critical of its performance and who has expressed doubts about its analysis of the Russian "hacking."


After the briefing last Friday, Trump and his incoming administration did shift their position, accepting the intelligence community's assessment that the Russian government hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's campaign chief John Podesta. But I'm told Trump saw no evidence that Russia then leaked the material to WikiLeaks and has avoided making that concession.


Still, Trump's change in tone was noted by the mainstream media and was treated as an admission that he was abandoning his earlier skepticism. In other words, he was finally getting onboard the intelligence community's Russia-did-it bandwagon. Now, however, we know that Trump simultaneously had been confronted with the possibility that the unproven stories about him engaging in unorthodox sex acts with prostitutes could be released, embarrassing him barely a week before his inauguration.


The classified report, with the explosive appendix, was also given to President Obama and the so-called "Gang of Eight," bipartisan senior members of Congress responsible for oversight of the intelligence community, which increased chances that the Trump accusations would be leaked to the press, which indeed did happen.


Circulating Rumors


The stories about Russian intelligence supposedly filming Trump in a high-end Moscow hotel with prostitutes have been circulating around Washington for months. I was briefed about them by a Hillary Clinton associate who was clearly hopeful that the accusations would be released before the election and thus further damage Trump's chances. But the alleged video never seemed to surface and the claims had all the earmarks of a campaign dirty trick.




President-elect Donald Trump. (Photo credit: donaldjtrump.com)
However, now the tales of illicit frolic have been elevated to another level. They have been inserted into an official U.S. intelligence report, the details of which were leaked first to CNN and then to other mainstream U.S. news media outlets.


Trump has denounced the story as "fake news" and it is certainly true that the juicy details reportedly assembled by a former British MI-6 spy named Christopher Steele have yet to check out. But the placement of the rumors in a U.S. government document gave the mainstream media an excuse to publicize the material.


It's also allowed the media to again trot out the Russian word "compromat" as if the Russians invented the game of assembling derogatory information about someone and then using it to discredit or blackmail the person.


In American history, legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was infamous for using his agency to develop negative information on a political figure and then letting the person know that the FBI had the dirt and certainly would not want it to become public if only the person would do what the FBI wanted, whether that was to reappoint Hoover to another term or to boost the FBI's budget or in the infamous case of civil rights leader Martin Luther King perhaps to commit suicide.


However, in this case, it is not even known whether the Russians have any dirt on Trump. It could just be rumors concocted in the middle of a hard-fought campaign, first among Republicans battling Trump for the nomination (this opposition research was reportedly initiated by backers of Sen. Marco Rubio in the GOP race) before being picked up by Clinton supporters for use in the general election.


Still, perhaps the more troubling issue is whether the U.S. intelligence community has entered a new phase of politicization in which its leadership feels that it has the responsibility to weed out "unfit" contenders for the presidency. During the general election campaign, a well-placed intelligence source told me that the intelligence community disdained both Clinton and Trump and hoped to discredit both of them with the hope that a more "acceptable" person could move into the White House for the next four years.


Hurting Both Candidates


Though I was skeptical of that information, it did turn out that FBI Director James Comey, one of the top officials in the intelligence community, badly damaged Clinton's campaign by deeming her handling of her emails as Secretary of State "extremely careless" but deciding not to prosecute her and then in the last week of the campaign briefly reopening and then re-closing the investigation.




FBI Director James Comey
Then, after the election, President Obama's CIA began leaking allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin had orchestrated the hacking of Democratic emails and provided them to WikiLeaks to reveal how the DNC undermined Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign and what Clinton had told Wall Street bigwigs in paid speeches that she had sought to keep secret from the American people.


The intelligence community's assessment set the stage for what could have been a revolt by the Electoral College in which enough Trump delegates could have refused to vote for him to send the election into the House of Representatives, where the states would choose the President from one of the top three vote-getters in the Electoral College. The third-place finisher turned out to be former Secretary of State Colin Powell who got four votes from Clinton delegates in Washington State. But the Electoral College ploy failed when Trump's delegates proved overwhelmingly faithful to the GOP candidate.


Now, we are seeing what looks like a new phase in this "stop (or damage) Trump" strategy, the inclusion of anti-Trump dirt in an official intelligence report that was then leaked to the major media.


Whether this move was meant to soften up Trump or whether the intelligence community genuinely thought that the accusations might be true and deserved inclusion in a report on alleged Russian interference in U.S. politics or whether it was some combination of the two, we are witnessing a historic moment when the U.S. intelligence community has deployed its extraordinary powers within the domain of U.S. politics. J. Edgar Hoover would be proud.

Source

[Paul Rigby]

"35 Pages" Attack Against Trump Fails - Foreign And Domestic Losses

Moon of Alabama

13 January 2017

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/01/dee....html#more

The tale about the fake accusations about Russian influence on the U.S. presidential election becomes more gripping by each day. The are part of a larger war between various groups of the "elites" but also include infighting between U.S. government organizations.

We know that there was heavy Ukrainian influence on the side of Clinton in the election and in the current smear campaign against Trump and Russia. But it certainly wasn't Ukraine alone that is behind this. There are more international connections.

The "former" desk officer for Russia in the British MI6 Christopher Steele was the one who prepared the 35 pages of obviously false claims about Russian connections with and kompromat against Trump. There are so many inconsistencies in these pages that anyone knowledgeable about the workings in Moscow could immediately identify it as fake. Putin personally started working on Trump five years ago when Trump had no political role or hope whatsoever? A Trump associate met Russian officials in Prague even though he has never been in the Czech Republic?

Steele spread the fakes throughout the press corps in Washington DC but no media published them because these were obviously false accusations.

Steele then decided to hand the papers to the FBI and to talk to its agents hoping they would start an official investigation. He cleared his move (or was ordered to proceed?) at the highest level of the British government:

The Daily Telegraph was told during a meeting with a highly-placed source in Washington DC last October that the FBI had contacted Mr Steele asking if they could discuss his findings with him. The source said that Mr Steele spoke to officials in London to ask for permission to speak to the FBI, which was duly granted, and that Downing Street was informed.
...
Once he had been given the all-clear, he met an FBI agent in another European country, where he discussed the background to the file he had compiled. His contact with the FBI reportedly began in July last year and ended in October, after he became frustrated by the bureau's slow progress.
When Steele's first move with the FBI in October did note deliver the hoped for results an attempt to stove pipe them through Senator John McCain was launched. A "former" British ambassador to Moscow arranged the hand over:

A former British ambassador to Russia has revealed he played a significant role in bringing the Donald Trump 'dirty dossier' to the attention of the American intelligence services.
Sir Andrew Wood said he spoke to Republican senator John McCain at an international security conference in November about the existence of material that could compromise the president-elect.

Mr McCain subsequently handed the document, which contained allegations of lurid sexual behaviour by Mr Trump in Russian hotels, to the head of the FBI.

The MI6 is well known for launching fakes on behalf of the British government.

Even the second, more official handover to the FBI still did not result in the hoped for publication of the allegations. But by that time Clinton was widely expect to win the election anyway so no further steps were taken.

After Trump unexpectedly won the election a new effort was launched to publish the smears. The Director of National Intelligence decided (or was ordered to) "brief" the President, the President elect and Congress on the obviously dubious accusations.

It was this decision that made sure that the papers would eventually be published. As the NYT noted:

What exactly prompted American intelligence officials to pass on a summary of the unvetted claims to Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and Congress? Officials have said they felt the president-elect should be aware of the memos, which had circulated widely in Washington. But putting the summary in a report that went to multiple people in Congress and the executive branch made it very likely that it would be leaked. [emphasis in the original!]
Only after Clapper or others leaked to CNN about the briefing of Obama, Trump and Congress, did CNN publish about the 35 pages:

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.
...
The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.
...
CNN has reviewed a 35-page compilation of the memos, from which the two-page synopsis was drawn. The memos have since been published by Buzzfeed. The memos originated as opposition research, first commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, and later by Democrats. At this point, CNN is not reporting on details of the memos, as it has not independently corroborated the specific allegations.
The last half-sentence is part of the smear campaign. When DNI Clapper recently tried to exculpate himself from the shit-storm he created he used the same obfuscation:

The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable ..
That is like saying: "The IC has not made any judgement that information of Barack Obama's Kenyan citizenship is reliable .."

Any media or intelligence agency that claims it could or did not judge the content of 35 papers is obfuscating in an attempt to give them additional weight. The easily verifiable content is so obviously false that the few not immediately verifiable claims in it can not be taken serious. The media and Clapper know this and, if they were truthful, would say so.

The attack on Trump (and Russia) failed. Trump brushed it of with a few tweets and sentences in his press conference. The attack did not hold up any of the procedures in Congress or elsewhere necessary to install the new administration. It did not change policies. The British government and the MI6 have cake on their face. The DNI office and the CIA will bleed.

The attack was a deep state attempt to stage a coup against Trump:

Trump has deliberately rattled the members of the deep state with his brazen criticism of U.S. intelligence findings about Russian hacking. Deep government does not stand idly by, as David Runciman wrote recently in the London Review of Books, and allow itself to be shat upon by newcomers. The president-elect has enemies in profusion on the inside who are practiced at the art of the leak. They may have had no official role in this attempt to stage a coup against Trump before he's even inaugurated, but they must be cheering BuzzFeed's naughtiness as they sharpen their knives for his administration.
This blog reported and warned a month ago of such "elite" coup attempts. The fight has since become more intense.

But this attack failed. Trump gained standing against the "fake news" created by the 35 pages. The fakery and smear attempt was just too obvious. One wonders why it was launched at all. Who panicked?

President Obama, major U.S. intelligence heads, neoconservatives, the British government, Ukrainian "nationalist (aka fascist) circles and the Clinton campaign conspire against Trump and try to derail his announced policy changes. Trump has argued for better relations with Russia and for a concentrated fight in Syria and Iraq against ISIS and other Takfiris and Islamists. This endangers Obama's legacies of starting a new cold war with Russia and of pampering al Qaeda and ISIS to overthrow the Syrian government.

Two fights within the U.S. government are being waged within this larger context. One is the fight between the CIA and the U.S. military over spying competence and lethal operations. CIA Director Brennan, who was and is Obama's consigliere and a Saudi operative, has waged a military campaign in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and several other countries.

The CIA's assassinations by drones is an operational issue which the military believes should be under its exclusive control. On the other side military special forces missions have hindered CIA intelligence gathering. The CIA support for and training of various Takfiri militants in Syria, Iraq and Libya is against the interest of the soldiers who eventually will have to fight these groups. The incoming National Security Advisor Flynn warned against the CIA's policies back in 2012 when he led the Defense Intelligence Agency. U.S. special forces then sabotaged such CIA operations in Syria.

With Flynn coming in as National Security Advisor the CIA is in danger of losing this fight. Flynn will argue for a CIA that only collects and analyzes and will likely try to move all operative businesses to the military Joint Special Operations Command.

Today the CIA used its unofficial spokesperson to (again) warn Flynn off. Writing in Jeff Bezos' blog David Ignatius stenographed the threat:

According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking. What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about "disputes" with the United States. Was its spirit violated?
(If Flynn's phone-calls are under FISA surveillance would that not be highly classified? How else would anyone know about them? How many laws were broken by planting this though Ignatius?)

A second area of internal conflict is about the Director of the FBI Comey. He was and is not sufficiently deferential to the Obama cabal and the Clinton campaign. He launched and publicly announced an investigation into Clinton's proven illegal behavior with regard to her private email server, but he refrained from announcing and investigating the obviously fake accusations against Trump which were peddled to him. Such disloyal misdeed demands punishment:

The Justice Department's inspector general said Thursday that he would open a broad investigation into how the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, handled the case over Hillary Clinton's emails, ..
...
The inspector general's office said that it was initiating the investigation in response to complaints from members of Congress and the public about actions by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department during the campaign that could be seen as politically motivated.
The inspector general is serving at the pleasure of the president. He can be fired as soon as Trump is in office. Unless he joins the cabal against Trump Comey has nothing to fear.

But the war against Trump is not over. In my view Trump should and must be fought but that fight should be about important economic and social issues for which people care and of which there are plenty.

Trump has his own cabal, libertarian billionaires like the Koch brothers, several generals in his cabinet and arch Zionists like Adelson. But that cabal's henchmen are not yet installed throughout the government. It is important to hinder such infestation.

The fight as it is waged now is an attempt to redirect Trump's foreign policies and to generally lesson his foreign policy power. That fight was already lost during the campaign. Every attempt to accuse Trump of this or that "Russia" outrage that has nothing to do with the average voter's life simply fails. These pseudo scandals waged within the "elite" media against him just makes him stronger.

But the cabal was unable to understand that during the campaign and is still unable to get a grip on it. It will continue its attempts and will lessen its own power through its failures.

Effort by Obama loyalists against Trump started immediately after election day:

Over the past 10 years, Obama alumni have spread throughout the government, the advocacy world, and influential parts of the private sector, including at Google and Facebook. That means there's a lot diverse talent to harness.
More attacks on Trump will come even when Trump is in full power and starts to clean house.

But all of those who openly work against him will be endangered. The continued open attacks only lay bare the various actors behind them. Those will be be shunned. Each new open attack against Trump will eliminate another power center installed during the Obama administration. If these hopeless attacks continue few will be left to wage the silent, patient resistance against the Trump administration that will be necessary to lessen the damage it will create.

To now attack Trump, Flynn, Comey or even Putin is hopeless and unproductive. It only hinders achieving their long-term aims. One thereby wonders why this panic reaction from one side of the deep state cabal continues. What dirt have they hidden that they fear will be unearthed?

[Paul Rigby]

Trump will be assassinated! - Dr. Paul Craig Roberts on Trump, Putin & Hacking

Published on 8 Jan 2017

Credit to RT https://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday
FUNDRAISER: http://russia-insider.com/support

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts states clearly and repeatedly that if they can't stop him becoming president they'll kill Trump just as they did with John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley. Former Assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, explains the attempted Electoral College coup on Trump, and the differences between the last Cold War and the new one.

[video=youtube_share;CDRg-PBgXsE]http://youtu.be/CDRg-PBgXsE[/video]

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[Tracy Riddle]

Let's just take off our blinders here and use our common sense. We know that Trump has a real weakness for attractive females, especially young ones. How many times has he talked about wanting to date his own daughter (if she wasn't his daughter)?

In a 2001 episode of The Howard Stern Show that circulated online Wednesday, discovered by viral-video editor Vic Berger of Turner-owned Super Deluxe, former New York Daily News gossip writer A.J. Benza tattles on Trump, all to host Howard Stern's delight.
Trump, meanwhile, is listening in on a phone line, denying the conversation ever transpired. (Trump was single at the time; he would marry current wife Melania Trump in 2005.)
"He bangs Russian people," says Benza.
"Who are you talking about, A.J.?" asks Trump. "I don't know anything."
Benza persists over Trump's protests: "He used to call me when I was a columnist and say, 'I was just in Russia. The girls have no morals. You gotta get out there.' "

Is it really so hard to believe that when Trump went to Moscow in 2011 to host the Miss Universe contest, he enjoyed the local scenery (so to speak), and the Russians photographed and recorded the whole thing? This is standard procedure for pretty much any intelligence agency. That means the Russians would have blackmail material to hold over Trump's head. That plus the Russian business ties of many of his associates. Exxon has drilling rights to 63 million acres in Russia, but they are being prevented by the sanctions. There's a LOT of Russian smoke around Trump, so you don't have to blame the deep state if there's some actual fire.

I don't know why there are so many Russian apologists on this forum. Russia today is not the alleged Marxist regime it was under the Soviets. It is actually more of a reactionary regime with ties to white nationalists, oligarchs and mobsters. Putin deserves credit for holding the country together against NATO expansion, but that's as far as I'll go in praising him. Otherwise he is a thug and a murderer.

[Tracy Riddle]

Trump will be assassinated! - Dr. Paul Craig Roberts on Trump, Putin & Hacking

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts states clearly and repeatedly that if they can't stop him becoming president they'll kill Trump just as they did with John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley.

Does Roberts think the same group ("they") assassinated Lincoln, Kennedy, Garfield and McKinley? I swear people are taking leave of their senses.

[Paul Rigby]

Live Report from Moscow Hotel Room proves CNN was right about Trump!

Published on 12 Jan 2017

[video=youtube_share;PwEBSuM-sa8]http://youtu.be/PwEBSuM-sa8[/video]

[Paul Rigby]

Mission accomplished for MI6 - Mays relations with Trump White House in tatters

Theresa May insists ex-MI6 agent behind claims of Russian 'dirty' dossier on Donald Trump has not worked for government for 'years' amid fears over damage to relations with US

• Row over Christopher Steele's Trump memos shows no sign of dying away
  
• Reports that UK intelligence services knew Steele was talking to the FBI
  
• Former ambassador admits he told John McCain about outlandish allegations
  
• Russia has blamed British government saying no such thing as a former spy
  
• Theresa May attempts to quell row by insisting Steele has not worked for authorities for 'years'
  

By JAMES TAPSFIELD, POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE and MATT DATHAN, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 12:47, 13 January 2017 | UPDATED: 18:32, 13 January 2017

Theresa May has finally moved to distance the government from the row over an ex-MI6 agent's claims that Russia has a 'dirty' dossier on Trump - insisting he has not worked for the UK authorities for 'years'.

After days of stonewalling by Downing Street, the Prime Minister attempted to quell speculation about official involvement following fresh allegations that the intelligence services knew ex-spy Christopher Steele was talking to the FBI.

Britain's former ambassador in Moscow Sir Andrew Wood has also admitted he told Mr Trump's sworn enemy, Republican senator John McCain, about the outlandish claims in the memos.

Asked about the controversy at a press conference with her New Zealand counterpart today, Mrs May insisted it was a 'longstanding' rule in government not to comment on intelligence matters.

But she added: 'It is absolutely clear that the individual who produced this dossier has not worked for the UK government for years.'

Earlier today, diplomat Sir Andrew, 77, spoke about his role in fueling controversy and said he does not believe Mr Steele would 'make things up' - but also conceded that he might not have 'drawn the correct judgement'.

The President-elect has again lashed out over the affair, calling Steele a 'failed spy' employed by 'sleazebag political operatives' and suggesting he wants to sue the ex-MI6 agent if he ever comes out of hiding.

He tweeted: 'It now turns out that the phony allegations against me were put together by my political opponents and a failed spy afraid of being sued'.

But Russia has ratcheted up the tensions by claiming Steele has never left MI6, and blaming the British government for the memos.

Security sources have indicated that Mr Steele spoke to UK Government officials before handing the dossier to the FBI.

The boss of MI6 is also said to be 'livid' that the ex-spy's actions have put them in an extremely difficult position with the new US administration - just weeks before Mrs May is due to make a crucial visit to Washington where she will try to lay the groundwork for a post-Brexit trade deal.

Tory MPs and former Ukip leader Nigel Farage have urged Mrs May to distance the UK from the memos and make clear to Mr Trump's team that the authorities had nothing to do with it.

But asked this morning if the government had yet been in touch with Team Trump to reassure them there was no government involvement in the Steele memos, a spokesman for the Prime Minister said merely: There is contact between the UK and the President-elect's team about plans for the forthcoming visit.'

Pressed on whether the government had been aware of the FBI's reported request to talk to the ex-agent about his memos, the spokesman said: 'How the FBI conducts an investigation is a matter for the FBI.

'It is not commonplace for us to get into specifics.'

The Foreign Office said it would not be commenting on reports that Steele spoke to government officials before handing his memos to the FBI.

A senior No10 source insisted Team Trump have had 'every opportunity' to raise concerns about British involvement with officials.

'They have raised no concerns with us,' the source added.

In an alarming Twitter post last night, the Russian embassy in London suggested Steele was still working for MI6 and briefing both ways' against Mr Trump and Moscow.

A Russian embassy spokesman said the tweet which said MI6 officers are never ex' reflected the mood in Russia'.

Sir Andrew said today: 'They are speaking in their experience of KGB officers I suspect'.

Following the tweet, Tory MP Crispin Blunt, who is conducting an inquiry into Russia, said it was a sign UK-Russian relations were the 'worst they could get in peace time'.

Mr Blunt, an ex-army officer and foreign affairs select committee chair, said: 'For a peace time political relationship, it is about as bad as it could get.'

Ex-ambassador to Moscow briefed McCain at security conference where Trump was the 'only thing delegates wanted to talk about'

Sir Andrew Wood's briefing for John McCain about the Trump 'dirty dossier' was at an event dominated by discussion about his election as US president

The meeting took place at the Halifax International Security Forum Canada in mid-November, which was dominated by gossip about the billionaire and his policies.

One seminar at the event was even called Make Democracy Great Again - and included one of Trump's famous baseball caps getting its own stool on the stage.

Other events included Russia: Putin' the Block Back Together, and Because Syria: I'm Your Friendly Neighbourhood Terrorist.

Sir Andrew Wood admitted today that because Trump had just won a sensational election victory it increased the importance of the report drawn up by Chris Steele last year.

There, Mr McCain sought the advice of Sir Andrew about the report on Mr Trump and the Moscow connection.

He said its contents appeared to have increased importance because of the way 'by the way Trump talked about the hacking exercise and about the stories of his treatment of women'.

Sir Andrew knew its details but insists he never read it or had a copy and has been forced to admit he spoke to Trump's sworn enemy McCain as the report was leaked to the press and published in full by Buzzfeed.

The Halifax forum was attended by some of the world's most important politicians including UK Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon, French Defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator and 2016 vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine.

Sir Andrew Wood was there in his role as Associate Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at The Royal Institute of International Affairs, better known as the Chatham House think tank.

He spoke at an event called Maidan, Crimea and the Obstacles to Democracy in Ukraine - which appears to have been largely behind closed doors.

Ahead of the event, when Trump was elected, experts said that the delegates would speak about little else than the billionaire and his impact on foreign and defence policy.

Janice Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto said: 'For them, whatever else they're worrying about, top of mind right now, is what will Donald Trump's foreign policy be? What will his security policy be? Will it be disruptive of the existing order? Are we going to see more change than we are going to see continuity?'

[Tracy Riddle]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/spy-who-wrote-trump-russia-memos-it-was-hair-raising-stuff

The Spy Who Wrote the Trump-Russia Memos: It Was "Hair-Raising" Stuff

When I broke the story in October, I spoke with him. Here's what he said.

DAVID CORNJAN. 13, 2017 1:31 PM

ands456/iStock

Last fall, a week before the election, I broke the story that a former Western counterintelligence official had sent memos to the FBI with troubling allegations related to Donald Trump. The memos noted that this spy's sources had provided him with information indicating that Russian intelligence had mounted a yearslong operation to co-opt or cultivate Trump and had gathered secret compromising material on Trump. They also alleged that Trump and his inner circle had accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin. These memos caused a media and political firestorm this week when CNN reported that President Barack Obama and Trump had been told about their existence, as part of briefings on the intelligence community's assessment that Russia hacked political targets during the 2016 campaign to help Trump become president. For my story in October, I spoke with the former spy who wrote these memos, under the condition that I not name him or reveal his nationality or the spy service where he had worked for nearly two decades, mostly on Russian matters.
"Someone like me stays in the shadows," the former spy said.
The former spy told me that he had been retained in early June by a private research firm in the United States to look into Trump's activity in Europe and Russia. "It started off as a fairly general inquiry," he recalled. One question for him, he said, was, "Are there business ties in Russia?" The American firm was conducting a Trump opposition research project that was first financed by a Republican source until the funding switched to a Democratic one. The former spy said he was never told the identity of the client.
The former intelligence official went to work and contacted his network of sources in Russia and elsewhere. He soon received what he called "hair-raising" information. His sources told him, he said, that Trump had been "sexually compromised" by Russian intelligence in 2013 (when Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe contest) or earlier and that there was an "established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit." He noted he was "shocked" by these allegations. By the end of June, he was sending reports of what he was finding to the American firm.

The former spy said he soon decided the information he was receiving was "sufficiently serious" for him to forward it to contacts he had at the FBI. He did this, he said, without permission from the American firm that had hired him. "This was an extraordinary situation," he remarked.
The response to the information from the FBI, he recalled, was "shock and horror." After a few weeks, the bureau asked him for information on his sources and their reliability and on how he had obtained his reports. He was also asked to continue to send copies of his subsequent reports to the bureau. These reports were not written, he noted, as finished work products; they were updates on what he was learning from his various sources. But he said, "My track record as a professional is second to no one."
The former spy told me that he was reluctant to be talking with a reporter. He pointed out this was not his common practice. "Someone like me stays in the shadows," he said. But he indicated that he believed this material was important, and he was unsure how the FBI was handling it. Certainly, there had been no public signs that the FBI was investigating these allegations. (The FBI at the time refused to tell me if it had received the memos or if it was examining the allegations.)
"This was something of huge significance, way above party politics," the former spy told me. "I think [Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well." He noted that he believed Russian intelligence's efforts aimed at Trump were part of Vladimir Putin's campaign to "disrupt and divide and discredit the system in Western democracies."
After speaking with the former counterintelligence official, I was able to confirm his identity and expertise. A senior US administration official told me that he had worked with the onetime spook and that the former spy had an established and respected track record of providing US government agencies with accurate and valuable information about sensitive national security matters. "He is a credible source who has provided information to the US government for a long time, which senior officials have found to be highly credible," this US official said.
I also was able to review the memos the former spy had written, and I quoted a few key portions in my article. I did not report the specific allegationsespecially the lurid allegations about Trump's personal behaviorbecause they could not be confirmed. The newsworthy story at this point was that a credible intelligence official had provided information to the FBI alleging Moscow had tried to cultivate and compromise a presidential candidate. And the issue at handat a time when the FBI was publicly disclosing information about its investigation of Hillary Clinton's handling of her email at the State Departmentwas whether the FBI had thoroughly investigated these allegations related to Russia and Trump. I also didn't post the memos, as BuzzFeed did this week, because the documents contained information about the former spy's sources that could place these people at risk.
When I spoke with the former spy, he appeared confident about his materialacknowledging these memos were works in progressand genuinely concerned about the implications of the allegations. He came across as a serious and somber professional who was not eager to talk to a journalist or cause a public splash. He realized he was taking a risk, but he seemed duty bound to share information he deemed crucial. He noted that these allegations deserved a "substantial inquiry" within the FBI. Yet so far, the FBI has not yet said whether such an investigation has been conducted. As the former spy said to me, "The story has to come out."

[Paul Rigby]

Avoid Open Motorcades and Grassy Knolls Mr. Trump! - George Galloway (Video)

A top British politician berates his government's intelligence agencies for meddling in the American elections

George Galloway

12 January 2017

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/tr...er/ri18526

George Galloway is a top UK politician with a TV show on RT. In cozy fireside chat he explains that progressives and liberals are in an odd alliance with the Military Industrial Complex in an attempt to smear Trump using false accusations. Galloway is good, as usual.

Transcript follows below.

[video=youtube_share;JnWZqYkfDzg]http://youtu.be/JnWZqYkfDzg[/video]

The press conference of Donald Trump in Washington yesterday was marked by kind of hysteria about a dossier. A very interesting file which had been compiled by a British intelligence agent.

I can't mention his name or they'll have to kill me though it's easily accessible on the internet. He is said to be a retired British intelligence official although i'm not sure that they ever really retire from the service, anyway, he wrote a report containing the most fantastical, weird and wonderful stories about Donald Trump's conduct in Russia and in particular in a hotel in Moscow.

I won't go into the details in case children or old ladies are watching this. But suffice to say, it went to the character of Donald Trump and to his moral standing.

It turned out that the dossier has been passed to the United States through a former British Ambassador to Moscow. That former Ambassador has not yet been identified but can only be one of seven such former ambassadors. And that former Ambassador gave it to the leader of the war party in Washington, Senator John McCain, who will not be happy until mushroom clouds are again sprouting in the world. And McCain gave it to the head of the FBI.

The CIA put it in a security briefing in which they either did, as they say, or didn't, as Trump says, present it to President-elect Trump when the heads of the spy agency's met him a few days ago.

Now, this dossier fell apart very quickly. It was filled with glaring schoolboy howlers - people's names were spelled wrongly, names of companies were spelled wrongly, people were misidentified in terms of the positions that they held. People were accused of attending meetings in cities in countries that they had never in fact ever visited and could prove that they were elsewhere in the United States at a baseball game, i think, at the time.

So, it has been quite widely discredited, but not before it was cascading around the world thanks to right-wing media organizations like CNN and BuzzFeed, and picked up by virtually every newspaper and network in the world, so, on the principle that some people believe there's no smoke without fire and the mud sticks, even when it has no right to, Trump has been severely diminished and degraded by the dossier produced by the British.

Now, in 1925 something called the Zinoviev letter helped to bring down the first ever Labour government in Britain. It purported to be a letter from the Russian head of the Comintern, Gregory Zinoviev, to his lieutenants in the British Labour movement, giving them their marching orders and in particular encouraging them to acts of sedition within the British armed forces. This brought down the Labour Prime Minister even though it was, quite quickly actually, proved to be a forgery that had been produced by, you guessed it, British Intelligence.

That brought down the Prime Ministership of Ramsay MacDonald and this one is aimed at another Donald: Donald Trump.

Now just for the avoidance of doubt: I'm not happy that Donald Trump is the president of the United States; that should have been Bernie Sanders, but I'm very happy indeed that Hillary Clinton is not to be the president of the United States and if Donald Trump were to live up to his flagship policy of reducing tensions with Russia, of turning the volume down on the anti-Russian hysteria of these last few years, that he'd be doing the world a big favor.

And what I believe is happening here is a kind of soft coup d'etat probably not to stop Trump taking the oath of office in less than a week, because that's a pretty forlorn hope, and would in any case probably produce civil war in America, but to cut him off at the knees, to put him into a political corner so that he feels intimidated about pursuing his rapprochement with Moscow.

Now, the signs are, early signs, that some of his lieutenants, in very powerful positions: Secretary of State, Designate for Defense, even Secretary of State Tillerson himself, the signs are that this intimidation is working.

On the other hand Trump was so robust in his press conference and so hostile to these Intelligence Services spy agencies that are trying to put them in this corner that it remains an open question whether Trump's going to have the guts to follow through. If he does, then frankly, there's a clear and present danger upon his life.

If I were him, I wouldn't be going near any grassy knolls, I wouldn't be on any motorcades in Dallas or anywhere else, I wouldn't be traveling in an open-top car because the coalition which is assembling in Washington on the Potomac against Trump is not only the usual suspect; it's not only the Military Industrial Complex that General Eisenhower, Republican President of the past, warned us about them overweening power, it's not only the spy agencies who killed political opponents from Patrice Lumumba through Salvador Allende, Diem in Vietnam, and many others. It's not only even the war party personified by Senator John McCain.

They've been joined by a new element which is particularly virulent indeed; and that new element is people who at least until now would have been defining themselves as liberals, as on the left, as progressive, so hostile to Trump are they that they have begun embracing the worst people in the world: the David Frums, the John McCain's. They have embraced the CIA that once upon a time they would have known are their natural predators.

And that bizarre coalition of the War Party, the Liberals, the spy agencies, the Military Industrial Complex, which stands to lose almost everything if tension in the world, and war in the world, becomes a thing of the past. That is a very toxic and dangerous coalition.

So, I'd be very careful if I was President Trump about my personal security. I think I'd have to employ guards to guard the guards.

But assuming Trump survives, assuming nothing stops him mounting that platform in less than a week from now as he takes the oath of office if he follows through on his campaign pledges, IF, and it's a big if, imagine letters 10 foot tall: I-F, IF, if he does, well, he might actually change the course of history.

Because it was a wish amongst wide sections of the American population not to go to war with Russia, not to be on the side of Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and to stop the de-industrialization, the de-skilling, the exporting of factories of jobs from America, from the rustbelt states that gave Trump his victory. If he follows through on their aspiration, if he follows the kind of policies that Bernie Sanders is projecting, well, Trump may turn out to be unexpectedly a good thing.

But if he doesn't if he succumbs, not to the blackmail of the Russians, but to the blackmail of the deep state in his own country, well, my goodness, we are in for a turbulent roller coaster over the next four years, maybe eight years.

My last word is this: the British Intelligence Services, instead of interfering in other people's elections, should be guarding our people, our society, and our political system's integrity. And as you saw from my last video, on the activities of the Israeli Embassy in London, hard evidence of interference in our democratic political process by a foreign power, on behalf of a rogue state, the British Intelligence will be better paying attention to protecting, us from that, yes, and from the threats that are abroad and even some within, against our people and against our interests.

So I'll never find myself in bed with the CIA, with John McCain, I'll never find myself in bed with MI6.

We'll talk about this again, sometime, I'm sure.